GAMBLING PORTAL & DIRECTORY

New Hotel-Casino Planned in Las Vegas

Billionaire casino-hotel developer Sheldon Adelson intends to build a new 53-story megaresort called The Palazzo.

The proposed megaresort would be next to The Venetian hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Adelson is board chairman of Las Vegas Sands Inc., the parent company of The Venetian.

The Palazzo would overshadow gambling mogul and rival Steve Wynn's latest project by 105 feet, according to an architectural draft of the project submitted to county planners.

The $2.4 billion Wynn Las Vegas hotel now under construction will be 50 stories and rise 613 feet above Las Vegas Boulevard. Wynn Las Vegas is scheduled to open in April 2005. The Palazzo would sit directly across from Wynn Las Vegas.

The Palazzo would cost more than $1 billion to construct. No completion date has been set. The Palazzo's latest design calls for 3,020 hotel rooms, 100,000 square feet of casino space and 400,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space, according to planning documents.

The Palazzo would have hotel rooms at the highest levels of any in Las Vegas, including the 43-story Mandalay Bay hotel-casino.

The Stratosphere hotel-casino is the tallest structure in Las Vegas and west of the Mississippi River at more than 1,100 feet, but doesn't house hotel rooms above 24 stories.